He thought of this morning; how she'd pressured him to see a therapist with her. “You have to face your feelings, Eddie,” she said, with that goddamn look, that anxious, furrowed-brow look that made him so crazy with rage and shame, he wanted to smack it right off her face. He hadn't sunk that low, not yet, but it was a near thing.
The girl was a lot like Alix, in spite of the clumsy clothes, the glasses and the scraped-back hair. Alix's billowing mane had always been perfectly coiffed; Alix had worn clothes that would have cost him a month's salary for a single outfit. He'd never had a woman like her, a drop-dead, blaze-of-glory woman. Barbara was lovely, but she was a good girl. Too good for him. He'd met her in college, and had been attracted to her ladylike manners. Barbara was an obvious choice for a wife, the perfect mother for his two girls.
But when he met Alix, something had detonated inside him, blowing everything he thought he was to pieces. A man could die happy fucking a woman like Alix. She was feral in bed, a bitch in heat. A couple of lines of coke snorted off her perfect tits, and they'd gone at it for hours, doing things he'd only heard of but never dreamed of trying. Things he could never imagine with his sweet, quiet Barbara.
He'd held himself together during that hallucination of a summer back in '85 by keeping his two worlds separate. Even Haley had never gotten a clue, thank God, since he himself had been the one infiltrating Lazar’s operation, not Bill. Barbara had inhabited one segment of reality, safe and sane and sensible with her cardigan sweaters and her smooth dark bobbed hair, all meatloaf and babies and breakfast cereal. Alix had ruled another segment. Naked, wide open, burning for him.
He'd had a pretty good life once, before that bitch had spread her legs and welcomed him into the gates of hell. Victor’s hooks had sunk into him so insidiously that he’d barely noticed them. Riggs was so far out of it that when the order came down, when he found out how deep in shit he was, he'd wanted to kill that worthless, whining bastard Peter Lazar. He wanted him the hell out of the way so he could have Alix, really have her, all for himself....
Riggs cringed, thinking about how gullible he had been. The world had exploded in his face, and when he sifted through the rubble, he was left with the knowledge that he was not one of the good guys, like Barbara believed. Maybe he never had been. Maybe he had been a piece of shit all along. Victor's creature, belly-down in the mud.
There had been long periods, years sometimes, when Victor hadn't called on him, and he'd begun to fancy himself a normal person again. But the call inevitably came. If Victor Lazar should ever find himself in trouble with the law, those videos would be mailed to his family and to the local media. Details of certain deposits to offshore accounts would be made public. The circumstances of Peter Lazar's death would be recounted to one and all. The same thing would happen if Victor were to die in a suspicious manner. If Riggs was to maintain some semblance of a life, no matter how fictitious, Victor had to stay healthy and happy. Cahill and McCloud had acted on their own. Goddamn mavericks, both of them. They had almost ruined everything.
His eyes fell on the monitor that lay in the passenger’s seat If only he'd drowned the little bitch along with her father. She'd seen him today, and if she hadn't recognized him yet, she soon would Those bright eyes had witnessed his transformation from a man into a crawling thing. He wanted to close those eyes. Forever.
He saw the sign and swerved A roadhouse. He stumbled into the dark interior and ordered a shot of bourbon and a glass of milk. It was as much as he dared allow himself, in his current state. He could drive after a single shot, if the pain in his stomach didn't make him pass out. He popped a handful of antacids and chased them down with milk, a trick that had ceased to work about eight months ago, but he kept it up out of force of habit. He thought about how it would be, to pass out and run into a tree. It didn't seem so terrible. Just the crunch of breaking glass, the shriek of bent metal, and then, darkness. Then nothing.
He left the money on the bar and lurched out. The puddles in the parking lot rippled in the chilly wind. He got into the Taurus and sat with his eyes shut and his hand pressed hard against his corroded gut.
His mind darted around, like a rat in a maze. But there was no way out, and presently his mind slowed. Just an exhausted defeated old rat, that was him.
He fumbled the key into the ignition. Heard the squeak of leather against leather. Felt the icy barrel of a gun, pressed against his neck.
“Don't move,” someone hissed.
The passenger door opened. A man picked up the small monitor that lay on the passenger seat and got in. A wave of frigid air accompanied him, as if the door to a meat locker had suddenly swung open.
The man gave him a pleasant smile. “Good evening, Mr.
Riggs.”
He wondered if it were actually possible for things to get worse for him than they already were. “Who the fuck are you?”
The man studied the monitor, playing with it. “We've never been introduced, but we're linked by fate. May I call you Edward?”
“If it's money you want, I don't have—”
“I enjoyed myself carrying out Jesse Cahill's execution, Edward” the man said. “I should thank you for the sport, as well.”
His blood froze, and his bowels loosened. “Novak,” he whispered.
The other man's smile widened strangely and carved deep shadows into his young-old face. His eyes glowed, phosphorescent in the gloom.
Riggs fought for control of his basic bodily functions. “What do you want from me?”
“Several things, actually,” Novak said. “You can begin by telling me everything you know about Raine Cameron.”
He was so cold his body was vibrating. “I don't know about—”
“Shut up.” Novak's voice cracked like a pistol shot, and the gun barrel pressed painfully into Riggs's cervical vertebrae. “Sixteen years of licking Victor Lazar's hand, isn't that enough for you?”
Riggs’s mouth sagged open, but no sound came out.
“Here is your chance, my friend,” Novak said “Your chance to put it to him right up the ass. Make him pay for making you crawl.”
He saw Barbara's face in his mind. The anxious line between his wife's brows was etched so deep now that nothing would ever smooth it away.
“I don't work for Victor Lazar,” he forced out, through numb lips.
Novak's eyeteeth glinted like fangs in the roadhouse sign's bloody light. “Of course you don't,” he agreed. “Now you work for me.”
Riggs let out the breath in his lungs and shook his head. “No,” he said. “Go ahead. Pull the trigger. Make my day. Go on, do it.”
Novak regarded him thoughtfully, and then made a gesture to the man behind him, who had been silent in the backseat. The pistol was removed. “Very well,” he said briskly. “Let us put matters in a different light”
“You can't control me. I don't give a shit anymore. I won't do it.”
Novak held up his hand, fluttered it impatiently. “If the prospect of punishing Victor and saving your own miserable life is not sufficiently motivating, then let me tell you this. You may not be aware of the company your daughter Erin is keeping.”
Riggs had thought it impossible to feel more afraid. What an idiot. Fear was an abyss that had no bottom, and he was falling. Down, down.
“Remember Erin's ski trip? To Crystal Mountain, up on Mt. Rainier? With her girlfriends... Marika, and Bella, and Sasha.”
“Yes,” he replied. His voice was reduced to a rasping thread.